Repeat after me: Social media is a tool. It works best when you have a purpose, direction, or strategy in using it.

Feeling lost already? See it as a creative or imaginative exercise. A blank page of paper is a tool. A pen is a tool. What you decide to do with them is a creative act. It requires vision. If you use social media only to market and promote a book, people will probably tune you out. (It’s not a very creative approach!) Often, you need to express interest in others first—or offer a worldview.

So ask: What greater purpose might you serve? How can you be interesting, or of service, or entertaining? When you have a purpose, you’ll not only be more effective, but you’ll also enjoy yourself more, and stick with it longer. Andrew Shaffer is an excellent example of an author who uses tools for a greater purpose than just marketing and promotion. (See his Evil Wylie project, which started as a Twitter account.)

Don’t expect that you’ll get it right the first time. You’ll have to experiment, and you’ll have to be patient. This is good. You’ll learn something from the process, even if you fail.

2. Great content (or entertainment) comes first.

No amount of expert marketing can make a poor or mediocre product sell—or gain visibility—like a great one. If what you have doesn’t meet the standards of your readers, you’ll be struggling each and every day to spread word of mouth because people don’t truly believe in your work.

You can tell what great content is because, when it comes to social media, everyone wants to share it. They want to comment on it. They want to “like” it. They want to be the one who made the cool discovery. They’re excited and have that itch to post their opinion. Great content matched to the right audience inspires that.

3. Context comes first.

The crowd who hangs out on Twitter is not the same crowd who hangs out on Facebook, or on LinkedIn, or on Google Plus, or on the Kindle Boards, or on the romance blogs. Of course there is some overlap between major social networks, but each tool will reach a different set of people. And each set of people will talk a slightly different language because they have unique perspectives and needs.

That means you’re wasting your time if you decide to propagate the exact same message across many different channels. You’ll also waste your time if your message never changes as time passes. Your message needs to fit the context, it needs to be timely, and it needs to be customized for each particular audience.

Sometimes you’ll realize that a particular community is the wrong context for any message or contribution from you.

How do you know? Well, if you’re paying attention (if you’re listening), it’s not tough to figure out. No one will comment, respond, share, like, or otherwise offer feedback. The community may even push you out. Or you may simply see no positive marketing impact (e.g., traffic to your site or a sales spike).

***

This may sound like “work,” but describing all this in words tends to make it sound more complicated or time-consuming than it really is. If I spelled out every single step you might take to evaluate a potential social networking tool, I might never finish even after a year of writing! But when you use your noggin and your intuition, the creative strategy or answer will present itself to you.

Jane Friedman has more than 20 years in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media and the future of authorship. She's the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors. You can find out more about her consulting services and online classes at her website, JaneFriedman.com.

Comments

Thanks for some necessary perspective. I fear bombarding my friends, former colleagues, and casual acquaintances on FB with too much news already, which makes me doubly afraid of dipping my toe into the twitter waters. I have this who-the-heck-would-want-to-follow-me complex. Still, I know I’m not using social media to my best advantage. I have a page for The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken, but I worry about annoying my friends and other FB connections with too much book news.

These are really helpful points, especially #3. I don’t do any kind of writerly social networking on Facebook. I keep that strictly for family and non-writer friends. I connect with writer friends through Twitter and blogging.

I have found Facebook an inappropriate medium for promoting (selling) anything. My observation of FB is that it is a place for fatuous, ephemeral ‘pinch and giggle’ quips and photos. Although I will never sell anything on ‘WU’, I find it satisfying, informative and encouraging to be in this writer-to-writer environment. I don’t think I have seen a single non-writer post or comment and that hasn’t weaken the attraction an iota.

I think Facebook is inappropriate for hard sells. But it’s excellent for keeping in touch with people who love your stuff, and for staying “front of mind” with an audience. It’s a helpful way to distribute information and updates given that people spend more time on Facebook than any other site (in the U.S.).

Whenever I offer a new online class or will be attending an event, I post an update. And people respond very favorably—because they’re genuinely interested in me and want to know. But I’m not “selling” — just informing. I’m also not repeating the announcements again and again and again. And such announcements are interspersed with helpful links as well as just fun stuff (Moroccan vacation).

Nice post on a subject that still makes me uneasy. The thing I take away that sets me at ease is that it’s not really about ‘selling’ at all. ‘Trying’ to be interesting makes me uneasy too (I think it’s just me, but Justine Musk makes me nervous. Someone so interesting and attractive, saying, ‘It’s us against them–I’m just like you;’ it sort of takes me back to high school). But then I remember that, while I may be a fantasy-loving geek, my readers will be geeks like me (more or less :-). I can comfortably ‘try’ to be interesting to them.

Trying to say anything (or instruct anything) in relation to social media is exceptionally difficult.

It reminds me of the following Buddhist analogy: When you point a finger at the moon, the finger doesn’t look like the moon. You can’t learn anything about the moon by looking at the finger.

Every time I’ve “tried” to get something from social media, it didn’t work nearly as well as letting good things happen—and many things I *never* intended or expected to happen, have happened due to social media, and my life is richer and more interesting because of it.

But I can’t tell you to “try” to do the same, as it will poison your efforts.

I give you that high school kind of feeling? Oh dear god. In my more dramatic moments I get a bit us-against-the-status-quo, I know (maybe the two are kind of synonymous? ha). …And I think the key thing to having interestingness is not to ‘try’ to ‘be’ anything, but to convey a genuine depth of interest in the world around you. Then the interestingness takes care of itself.

Jane, great post — you continue to be one of my heroes — and thank you for referencing those posts. They were inspired by writings by Cal Newport (his book How to Be A High School Superstar which might be aimed at high school students but is about having a remarkable life, period) and Guy Kawasaki, two of the most interesting people around.

No offense, Justine. But you’re just so damn cool. You just remind me of a time when I felt not-so-cool, and envious of those so comfortable in their coolness. At 50, not too many people have that effect on me anymore, so I hope you can find a way to see my remark as a compliment.

And I totally agree about the ‘trying,’ and the ‘depth of interest’ thing. Good advice from someone I find interesting. Thanks.

You have hit the exact point at #2. “No amount of expert marketing can make a poor or mediocre product sell—or gain visibility—like a great one……You can tell what great content is because, when it comes to social media, everyone wants to share it. They want to comment on it. They want to “like” it…”

Thanks for revealing the exact truth about the behavior of Social Media.

Jane, I’ve loved all your posts on social media and promotion on your blog and at Writer’s Digest. This is just as helpful! I think social media is the trickiest because it’s not a set “broadcast” like advertising… it takes interaction and truly being “social” not just “selling.” Thanks for the insight!

Another few additions to this list of tips might (hopefully) prove worthwhile. Alex & Laura talk about their decidedly non-sales/marketing use of Facebook. Couldn’t agree more. usage of Twitter for direct marketing can sometimes be the fool’s errand. For reasons not related to promoting my book, some time ago I started a second Twitter account. When my first novel came out, I realized some of what I was putting into my @JamesKirk stream might not be conducive to folks checking me out & evaluating my worthiness as an author they would buy & read.

So, I started using @BoldlyGoing for all the “other” stuff. Oh, and realize the more services you use out there, the more stuff you may be dumping into your Twitter stream. And facebook for that matter. Everyone wants to connect you to these social networks because it helps promote their social community.

In light of that little discovery, I started changing my personal Twitter on those services.

That also reminds me of another suggestion. Start using these services now. You will not only want to have real tweets (not just promotional ones), but you need to do the work to find the best followers. And something interesting happens when add genuine comments: you will start getting genuine interactions & bunches of friends/followers.

Oh. The number of spam accounts that follow you will increase as well. Just delete or block them and never follow back if they bother you!

My big question is how do you find someone’s business page if they already have a social page? I hate to give up my social page, but I just started a business page and it’s not overrun with likes at this point. If I want to look at someone else’s business page, there is no clue. Am I missing something?

When you run a search on Facebook, it will return results for people as well as businesses. If you have both types of pages, then both will show up in a search unless someone is filtering the results.

However, I don’t think you should expect a ton of “likes” immediately for your business page. You might read my other blog post (link below) on principles for Facebook fan pages, if you haven’t seen it.

THANK YOU for pointing out that the different social media sites should be used differently. Each has pros and cons, and unique qualities. Taking a one approach fits all stance never works well, and it makes me cringe when I see it. It’s a real pet peeve of mine.

You can share the same info on the various sites, if you do so the right way. There’s a lot to learn, and it can be intimidating. It also takes time to figure it all out. A few slips ups are to be expected. But if you don’t catch on, eventually people will lose interest.

Sometimes I think people get on Social Media, because “everyone else is doing it.” I like to think of it as a community. I find the people who work best for me are those who build a relationship, then one day they say, “hey what about this book.” And, I think, they’ve never let me down before, so I’ll give it a try. I’m from a small town and I like shopping locally. I do the same with social media community. The mega-phone, constant sales pitch doesn’t move me.

I’ve had a Facebook account for some four years but only recently have I decided to invest some quality time in it. My gut feeling about it is that its main function is to simply keep people aware of you, not in any big way, just be seen as always being around. That’s why I’ve only changed my profile image once in all that time. It’s like a logo that people notice out of the corner of their eye. I don’t have anything especially profound to say and if I did I’m more likely to write a poem rather than squander it on Facebook and, frankly, I spend more time commenting on other people’s posts than actually posting myself. Seriously who cares if I’m on page x of some book they’ve never heard of?

I have a Twitter account too. That I am struggling with for much the same reasons. I sit in a chair, read and write all day and although I read and write interesting stuff I find I don’t have much to say about it that I don’t say in my blogs. I only have two followers at the moment, my wife and some bloke who looks like he’s on target to follow every blog in the world; I follow no one. I would like to make more of this do-called wonder tool but I see no point in following all the people I’m already friends with on Facebook because most of them read my blog anyway and I read theirs.

I feel a bit like most comedians must feel. People expect them to be funny on demand and as people stream past them they’re all looking for a gag, a smile and maybe an autograph. I like to think I’m an interesting guy but the burden to be interesting can wear one down. Some days I can’t imagine what I could possibly say that would interest anyone. And so I say nothing. Also I have a propensity for loquacity: seriously, what am I going to do with 140 characters? That’s a single line in Word. I use more characters than that clearing my throat in the morning.

This part: “My gut feeling about it is that its main function is to simply keep people aware of you, not in any big way, just be seen as always being around. That’s why I’ve only changed my profile image once in all that time. It’s like a logo that people notice out of the corner of their eye.”

Yes! Absolutely. It can work “harder” than that, but I think you’ve nailed the key benefit.

I have restrained myself from making a comment about the writing scene in America, because I knew way too little (and still do) about it to have an opinion I could defend. However, after hoarding Amazon, reading blog posts on WU, visiting different blog sites, I have to add a comment. Sorry if I am out of topic, but I will try to be one topic, as best I can. Good advice, by the way.

English is not my native tongue, so please excuse my writing and choice of words.

It seems as though the whole writing scene is about making money, writing the breakout novel that simply everyone must have! Libraries upon libraries have been written simply describing how to write THE novel. In some way it reminds me about the self-help books, which are supposed to make you either thin or happy.

The issue here, It seems to me, is that the diversity of novels is lost. At best, you get airport fiction that sadly goes hand in hand with our short attention span – it’s entertaining when you read it, and when you put it away, it’s gone, out of the system. Nothing new, nothing learned just the emperor’s new clothes.

I live in a country in which its inhabitants have produced little over a hundred novels. That means if I write a novel, it will be published – of course a certain standard is to be preserved, but it is most likely to be published. For me, this makes room for writing what I want, not what my agent or editor wants me to write.

Maybe my point is this: How could something truly original come about, when the power of the pen lays in the hands of the publisher, who is ultimately driven by money from the pockets of the lay, reality-show watching majority? You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place; either write what the masses want to read, or don’t be heard – at all.

Sorry for the long post and inappropriate place, but I had to get it of my chest.

You raise an important point! I don’t know that I can provide a satisfying answer, but in the U.S. there are small presses, nonprofits, and government grants (e.g., from the NEA) that exist solely to support important literary work.

I wrote and published an experimental, literary novel that I am quite proud of. But I probably spent more money to get it into existence than I ever made on it. The reality is that if I want to make money as a writer, I need to have some mass appeal. So I now write mysteries. I like those, too, but they do not have the same sort of philosophical and linguistic reach.

I rarely “sell” anywhere. I provide helpful news items, offer opportunities for guest blogging, and share blog posts and FB posts I have found helpful or that would be helpful to others. I also share links to books I love. I want people to trust me. If they trust me, then they will look for my service when they need it. And I am watchful of others – if their “platform” is MEMEME and a steady stream of “buy my book,” then I do tune them out – and when I see their name come up anywhere, I delete.

I probably am completely missing the rockity old boat for my book sales, but one day I just finally decided to have fun with my blog and facebook and not angst over it so much, feeling I am lacking or somehow doing it all wrong (which I admit I am to some degree!). I didn’t want to do the “self promo” thing; I didn’t want to try too hard to be clever or intelligently chatty; I didn’t want to “try” to be or do anything. I’m a bit chaotic mixed with a big fat ole drive with some competitive nature thrown in and a little bit of “helloooo out there!,” so I just do whatever feels natural and fun and go with it.

I think Facebook and my blog have become a “respite” from my (lonely reclusive *laugh*) writer life. With deadlines and expectations and ect etc, it’s nice to just “be myself” and relax a little.

Like you, Jane, I have the “everyone’s invited all-encompassing” facebook page without the “author page.” I enjoy it though – the conversations, the interactions with readers, friends, and sometimes family (who do not really use FB all that much).

Well said, once again. I like the idea of different voices on different social media outlets, something I’ve especially noticed since Google+ came around. I definitely tailor the message, and try not the “waste” the time I spend. :)